fred67

With typically several layers of cache memory, I don't think memory bandwidth would be the biggest issue, but as I mentioned before, things like that are hard to parallelize because later calculations often depend on current calculations - it mostly has to be done serially. Even if the data could be arranged to be parallelized, it seems to me the memory would then be an issue because different processors would be trying to write to the same pages of memory at the same time. It all comes down to the fact that multicore and multiprocessing isn't the panacea that people think it is. I can't tell you how the 3D software they use where I work does parallelization of the interactive work, although I'm sure it's multithreaded for certain operations to keep a more interactive interface (in which case threads could run on other processors), but the greatest advantage is realized during rendering (not a graphics adapter rendering, but generating the series of image files that will later be composited together). In fact, even with a farm of multicore rendering boxes, we have scripts that break up the rendering portions and send them to different boxes to render, then the scripts put them back together at the end. I'm not arguing that TLG couldn't do this better and faster, but it's unlikely you'd see a huge gain. Frankly, most good compilers should be able to just enable optimizations for SMP when compiling without having to change the code at all - just a recompile. Of course, the style of programming makes optimizations easier or harder, too.

+1 megasad - should probably be +16 for a whole set of minifigures

Interesting theory. I personally wouldn't mind going back to MOT style, where you bought a base pack for the "nuts and bolts" of the engine and then a color pack for the rest. Didn't work out so well for them, apparently, but then again is no .

I would like to incorporate sounds into MOCs, but the LEGO bricks are too limiting. I dabble in electronics (not even really... I guess I would like to dabble, I've not done anything beyond a few simple lights just for seeing how to do it), I would love for a third party like lifelites to build an arbitrary sound brick. I've looked into the chips they use in greeting cards, but their lives seem way too limited. Plus the electronics to transfer clean sound from a PC, for example, to such chips is beyond me. Moreover, if I were making a wish list, I would want the options to choose which sound to play (or have the electronics select randomly) from several sound files, and to play and stop at the end of the file or loop until stopped. My goal is to start simple, though - a single sound that stops when the data is complete; the second step would be to loop continuously until stopped. I don't think the electronics should be that difficult. Being able to trigger it with a remote would be cool. It would be great if TLG released such a thing - something you can transfer sounds from your computer via USB to, unplug it, and plug it into your train or house or what have you.

I found that at shows, also... I'm not in a club (although props to NGLTC), but I found when talking with other train hobbyists that they don't consider LEGO a "real" train hobby. Some of them come around after a while. How open am I? I just switched to a new department at work, and we did a "round table" introduction, including hobbies, and I was not shy about it. In fact, I invited people to come around to my office to see what little LEGO I have there - some architecture, Star Wars, a Harry Potter Quidditch shelf (where I have two sets combined to have the whole "pitch") and Indiana Jones - the classic "Temple Escape" set. To be fair, though, I work in television production and there's a lot of others with "toys" on display... shelves and shelves of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and other iconic toys... so I'm not really out of place.

I was a train enthusiast... unbelievably the set that got me into LEGO as an adult was 4561, Railway Express (perhaps the ugliest 9V set ever); but it was on sale - so I got two. I didn't even know LEGO made such trains. After seeing my interest in LEGO, and knowing I'm a big Star Wars nerd fan, my mom bought me 7127, Imperial AT-ST... I actually still didn't get into Star Wars at the time, LEGO was too expensive (still is... I don't know if I have brain damage or something being a big collector now). But after several years of passing up other themes, and missing out on Harry Potter (or so I thought at the time), I started buying Star Wars... too many. I actually scaled back to just OT sets. But then I also got into Castle because I'm a big LOTR fan, and Fantasy Era was the closest we were going to get. Still angry they practically advertised elves and never released them until CMFs. My love for Castle stuck around and I have some of the new Kingoms sets, too. Going along with the train theme, I started buying the beautiful modular buildings and some of the creator houses. I also got a few technic sets, and love CMFs; they started back in with Harry Potter, so I started getting them, too. Not a pirates fan, but love the Imperial Flagship and got one of those - I also like POTC, but don't want to get into yet another theme... got a couple of the smaller sets, though, and intend on getting QAR and the Black Pearl when it's available. I also got the Toy Story train, but only because I'm into trains. Along the way I've picked up most of the architecture series and a handful of smaller polybags for themes like Atlantis just because I thought some of the figures and squids and stuff were cool. Got some NASA sets, too... so yeah, I'm kind of all over the place (and broke). My wanted list is wonderfully short right now, though... I'm pretty happy about that. EDIT: I also picked up some POP and Pharaoh's Quest because they look kind of cool and were on sale.

Well, I haven't had to deal with parallelizing code in over 15 years, and I haven't done 3D programming for almost as long. The problem with multi-processing geometric transforms is fighting over memory. Rendering is highly parallelize-able, because you're writing to sectioned off chunk of memory while all processors can read the already transformed geometry without penalty (or with little penalty, anyway). Transforms are better done with a vector processor - the kind you'd find on a GPU. LDD already requires OpenGL... so if you've got hardware acceleration, LDD should be taking advantage of it. Maybe one of the problems here is you're seeing maxed out CPUs, but you're not getting the same information about your GPUs... maybe the GPUs are maxing out.

I'm going to send you a PM, but I'd like to point that what page a post is on depends entirely on how a user has their forum settings. For me, your post is on the first page, as I have mine set to display up to 40 posts per page. It's also easier for everyone else if you can make a link to your post.

Writing programs for multiple processors isn't always easy or even beneficial. Reading/Writing files is going to be bound by your drive - the processor is already faster than you can read and write from your drive, so multiprocessing doesn't help disk speed. Rendering could be helped, but it depends on how it's already being rendered. For most people, using hardware acceleration instead of a software based library would be the most helpful as far as speed goes, but then you have other issues. I don't know what LDD uses, but if they use Direct3D for rendering, then you'll never see this app on a Mac or any other OS. A lot of people could benefit if they used OpenGL, though. Multi-processing is really only useful for heavy computations. Games can take advantage because they can process physics, sound effects and music on different processors... programs like photoshop benefit because you can usually apply algorithms simultaneously to many subdivisions of an image. I'm not seeing where you'd see a huge benefit with LDD. I'm not suggesting LDD wouldn't be better with multi processor support (as far as a program is concerned, multi-core = multi-processor), but I don't think you'd see the benefits you seem to assume you'd get. Moreover, you could keep doubling your cores and even general purpose programs written for multiple processors aren't going to get much faster... there's only so much work you can distribute, most work needs to be done serially.

I guess I should have whined.

I agree, but my problem is on Saturday morning I drop my son off at martial arts and then have two hours to kill (it's not worth it to go home). I don't always go to the LEGO Store (maybe every two or three weeks), but when I do I have about an hour and a half to spend there.... even then sometimes I rush a bit because on Saturdays by 11:00am the store is packed with monsters... little screaming kids.

Welcome back, Gary... I bought Gary's recreation of a classic Maersk ship a couple of years ago, and got the first collector's guide. If anyone's got a question about LEGO history, Gary's the one to ask.

That's awesome! No tiles at my LEGO Store! D'oh! I'd love to get my hands on a few large cups of dark red, tan, or lbg tiles.

Warm (not hot) water and mild dish detergent does a good job (and, from what I recall, is TLG's recommendation). That's what I do... in batches, warm water with dish detergent in a large bowl, I let it soak for a few minutes and occasionally agitate with my hand, then dump them in a strainer and rinse off, dump them on a spread out towel and pat them to remove the bulk of the water and then let them air dry for a day or two. As I sort them out afterwards, I separate out the discolored bricks and retrobright them.

I got both the "back ordered" Tantive IV and my ARF today... in separate packages because it was assumed the backordered Tantive IV was, in fact, back ordered.

They were already working on eight... six and seven sounded like done deals. It really seems silly to think they should stop sooner than later so people won't be disappointed... which disappointment would be greater, really?

Very nice, I only hope I can do stuff like this in the future. Wish I had a monorail to worry about passing under my bridges! It just looks phenomenal... such a clean, elegant, and "realistic" design.

This is repeated from another thread, but the latest Brick Journal magazine interviewed some of the people working on CMFs who, back in the December time frame, when the article was apparently being written, were already mentioning they were working on 6, 7, and 8, and talking about how they are working on them while 3 was just hitting the stores, so I think they'll be going for quite some time. Look on the trading thread... PM people with other offers if you don't have figures to trade. Some people (myself included) are up for trading for non-CMF LEGO, too.

Funny... I just posted this is a technic thread on keeping MOCs clean... DSCF0304 by FredJH, on Flickr So... these are my "display" CMFs, and I have four of those cases now, and put 20 in each case (three rows of 7-6-7). That works out EXACTLY to 80 for the "original" five series of CMFs (although we know there's more coming now). Other categories: CMFs for trading are mostly still sealed an in plastic "shoebox" size bins, sorted into complete sets. CMFs that I use for MOCs and just playing around are sealed like Big Cam's, only without the paper insert, of which I only saved a few. Other figures that came with sets usually stay with the sets, whether on display or packed away, and the miscellaneous ones that I've gotten over the years stay with my "play" CMFs, although only the "special" ones get their own baggies.

Well, the question is how to keep them clean, not clean them after the fact. If most of the models are simply on display, a display case would be great. Right now I have all four current sets of CMFs in display cases, as I suspect keeping them clean (or cleaning them later) would be horrendous. I also have other smaller MOCs in display cases... DSCF0304 by FredJH, on Flickr I imagine a lot of technic MOCs could fit in one of these... nice display, the top lifts off easily for "play." (note that the risers in this particular display are separate and can be removed) This display case gives you about 30 studs in width, but there's also all sorts of other similar displays in various sizes for relatively inexpensive prices at the Container Store. These particular ones also stack pretty nicely, giving you even more display room. Other than that, periodic spraying with air would probably do the most.

12 to 14 hours/week, probably, on average.

Inception. Was OK, didn't live up to the hype. Took the kids to see Rio last week, that was quite good.

Ditto... this is the only Cars set I want, and am very pleased to see printed pieces. I couldn't tell from the latest LEGO magazine (and you know they do a pretty good job of making things look as nice as possible), but was hoping.

Manhattan is a very expensive place to do business; you'll often see disclaimers on ads for fast food, for example, being more expensive in NYC. No doubt the store is raking it in, but it's equally no doubt their operating costs are a lot higher than in Queens.

They're not brown... sorry for the bad (I guess) picture... they are dark red, which is what made them interesting to me. I've NEVER seen anything like technic turntables on PAB wall, though... as I mentioned, LEGO Education sells them 2 for $12 (although they can be had a lot cheaper on BL).